


A Night of Firsts.

by ItsStillBeating



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Fluff, High School, House Party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3115838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsStillBeating/pseuds/ItsStillBeating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for The Westallen Gift Exchange for lrisallen!<br/>A story about Barry and Iris going to Barry's first house party, and getting to know each other and confessing their feelings to one another. I really enjoyed writing this! </p>
<p>If you like it, please either send me a message at itsstillbeating.tumblr.com, or comment or kudos it. I'd love to hear your feedback, no matter how constructive. </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night of Firsts.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

At 12:54 the sky was dusty with slight glitter where there were dim remnants of stars. They had ended up on the roof. It was a flat affair with a squashy floor which they lay on. Iris’s head was lolling slightly and had rested in the dip of Barry’s shoulder whilst they both looked up. There wasn’t a huge amount to see in the dust filled sky, but there was a huge amount to feel in the warmth coming off of Iris, for Barry. Getting to the roof, and to this point in general had been strange, and stumbling.

At 11:30 four days ago Barry had witnessed the wheedling of Iris West. It was a brief experience, consisting of, ‘Barry! Come here!’ and Barry padding over to Iris’ room wearing the giant bear slippers she’d bought him, and the rest of his pyjamas. Iris was wearing shorts and a top, and she beckoned him in to where she was sitting cross-legged on her bed until they were both sitting; Barry’s limbs folded awkwardly as they had to be on a regular single bed. After Iris had thwarted Barry’s attempts to tickle her foot- no less than three times- by slapping his hands and whispering loudly ‘BARRY!’ she began.

‘So, I have a plan.’

‘Yeah, I guessed so.. With all of the secrecy and the whispering and the.. Wait, is that literally the soundtrack to Mission impossible?’ said Barry, with laughter bubbling loudly out of him.

‘Shh!’ Iris said, motioning to her lips with her finger.

‘I’m going to sneak out tomorrow, to go to a party, and I know you don’t really party, and I don’t really ever sneak out’ (in this case, ‘don’t really’ mean ‘never’) ‘but, I want us to do this together, it’ll be a night of firsts, for both of us.’

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

Barry had agreed to go to this wrap party for the student newspaper for three distinct reasons.

One: He was proud of Iris.

Two: Iris had asked him conspiratorially; whilst they were alone in her room… and she was wearing her wonder woman pyjama shorts.

Three: Barry’s experience with alcohol was limited to that one time with Chad from the science fair where they’d brewed yeasty ethanol and had drunk the awful concoction whilst spluttering. So…not extensive. 

And, Barry’s experience with parties was less extensive than that. And, oddly enough for him, being a complete and utter uber nerd, he really liked people. He liked helping people, and talking to people and having them talk to him, and in the closed system of his high-school he didn’t think he met enough. Sure, maybe this party would have some of those annoying stereotypes and caricatures that were people pretending, and not allowing anyone to pierce the veil. But Barry also longed for being able to mingle with the people that he’d shunned and hated throughout their adolescence, simply because he was angry and scared and they weren’t Iris.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

On the way down the winding avenue that brought them to this house Iris had divulged her own experience with alcohol and parties.

“I like getting buzzed at parties because it’s fun and I can have these ideas and make them happen, you know?” Here she’d stopped and tilted her head. “I don’t like not being…sharp I guess, though.”

Despite his inexperience Barry understood that Iris didn’t want a chink in her armour. In their school Iris was the poster girl for malleable likability. Barry knew some of the reason was her being so enthusiastic and charismatic and beautiful, and he felt innately aware of all of those very intrinsically ‘Iris’ qualities. But he also knew that in the polarizing and backwards environment of their high school Iris knew when to shut her mouth in order to maintain an image. She didn’t have to be sharp and intimidatingly convincing for them—in fact it was better if she wasn’t. But Barry knew better than to judge. Iris had her bronze-plated camouflage and he had a target on his forehead. Both were ways to be afforded a sort of invisibility when apart. A sort of invisibility that wasn’t required when they were together. 

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

After reaching the party and being crowded into the kitchen, Iris had run her hands smoothly down his and a girl’s arm—an introduction, apparently. And so Barry found himself talking to Willa and musing on how much Iris with all of her AP Economics knowledge was going to kick the asses of everyone coerced into Monopoly.

The party so far was strangely small compared to what Barry had thought it would be. It was definitely in a house, not one of the conversions into a vessel for sin found in teenage movies, but just a normal house. There were school pictures and grocery lists tacked on the fridge, and porridge on the counter and in the living room there was a dusky grey carpet… a very un-teenage carpet indeed. The people were different too. Barry was happy to mingle, happy to see, happy to meet. And in his mind there had been an almost ‘speed-date’ quality to parties, where he’d zing around lacklustre conversations until he found someone he absolutely adored, and then he’d grab their hand and show them to Iris and they could be Iris and Barry’s other adopted best friend. That didn’t happen.

There were far less people than he thought there would be (under ten) and they all knew each other, which was as no-brainer with it being a wrap for a team. Strangely enough, they weren’t the monsters he’d thought they were during his isolation, but they weren’t it either. It was as though people walked past one another in a daze, unable to connect and then in situations in which they could they realised they were from different worlds. They were polite and peaceful alien visitors. But all in all, lack of another best friend didn’t hurt Barry too much. Barry occupied himself instead with inspecting these ‘aliens’ like a tourist. All this Barry did with the aid of a bottle, not hugely unlike his yeast concoction in chemical composure but far different in effect. Willa was bright in a way that was blurring his vision and bleeding into the white tiles around him. He admired the thick lines of her, her plastic glasses, her spiky hair and the thick black lines of her eyes and eyebrows. 

Talking to Willa morphed into talking to Harry and being flustered by Damien and feeling anxiousness creep up. What if he was just rambling? He had a tendency to do so when not stopped and he was drunk, as evidenced by the haze of the lights and the blurred beat that was reverberating from the living room. He felt an urge to tell everyone about the waves causing this blur of pop, but he was torn. He wanted to sparkle and fly and take advantage of the blurry conglomerate that accompanied this newest experiment. But he also wanted to be stimulated and the dullness was making him rash and unable to do anything but repeat himself.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

Soon he was wandering to the next room. Finding Iris hadn’t been a plan until it was. Seeing her draped on the couch sleeping filled him with extraordinary comfort. He sat down beside her until her stirring put an end to his sitting. “Barry!” she said, and her brown eyes whizzed to his face, their contrast with her radiant skin making him alert. She hopped up from the couch and began twirling and giggling and soon she’d brought Barry up to where she stalked along the bookshelf.

“So, I’m definitely with the Hawking.”

“Y-yeah,” Barry answered her, “knowing the history of everything that has ever happened is a pretty solid grounding.” Iris nodded rapidly.She picked up the book and placed it on her head like a ballerina. Barry felt like a viewer. He felt like he was in a theater watching a film in a color slightly more saturated than real life. He felt the distance between them, forced there by the glass he kept between her and that final truth. But her hand pulling his towards the corner of the room emphasized how close the threads between them wound them up.

Iris was pointing at the ceiling; or rather the trap door on the ceiling. “Barry, look!” And soon he was laughing as she giggled atop his shoulders.

“For the love of God, stop wriggling, Bear. I’m so glad you got that growth spurt!’ “And for a few minutes Barry was struck with the memory of Iris’ dark eyes the first time he’d looked at her from 6’1 after that summer apart. Why hadn’t he kissed her? He’d wanted to. And there was a fleeting, silly part of his brain that read into the inflection of her “Heey…Barry” and that part of his brain also led him to watch how her bottom lip fell and scraped her teeth on its way back up and thought she’d been thinking the same thing. After Barry’s scrambling and Iris’ drunken grace they were on the roof, intertwined enough to be innately aware of each other but not enough for it to be abnormal.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

“So?”

“So?” Barry replied with a shorter more punctuated inflection than the one he was mirroring.

“Good party?”

“Okay, eventful, fun, bright.”

“Well now you’re just listing things, Bear.”

“What? No, c’mon. No.”

“You are!” Iris said this in a grave stage whisper, and then, “What’s wrong, Bear? I wanted you to have fun.”

“And I did, Iris!” There was silence as Iris slid her foot so that her ankle was wrapped around his and Barry willed his blood (in its highly alcoholic splendour) to realize that he was the master of his body and it was important to supply his brain in its attempt to be normal instead of his dick in its attempt to ruin this facade of nonchalance. 

Eventually he spoke again. “It was nice. But it was also just, you know, talking to people in a room. I mean…they were cool and all, but it wasn’t the crazy teenage party I’d thought I was missing out on.”

Iris laughed loud and turned to look up to Barry, who was slightly displaced from his side. “And what do those entail?” she asked with one eyebrow raised, and he could tell she could barely contain her eye roll. Before he could answer her hand went up to her mouth and then to his chin.

“We can do all of those things up here! I’ve always said that those others are boring anyway. Who needs them?”

And Iris lay across him, holding his chin and looking into his eyes. Everything seemed to fall into place at once under the dust and Barry couldn’t tear his eyes away this time. Gravity seemed to work everything else out, realising that what Iris and Barry wanted most was to be together and allowing them to feel they were staying still whilst getting closer and closer together. And then there it was, they were kissing.

It was a release of such emotion, like a waterfall. Barry kissed Iris the once, and then broke away softly, and kissed her again. He kept thinking he was going to start talking, or that she was going to start talking, but it seemed as though communication was both going as fast as it ever had and as slow as it could. Iris’ lips were soft, like the rest of her, and her neck was warm against her hand, and her ribcage shifted and lifted both of their shirts as she strained up for more.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

At 10:30, on Sunday they were at home, and Barry couldn’t stop talking.

‘… and when I sprained my knee, and you tried to piggyback me home but sprained your knee too and started crying..’

And Iris sat on the couch across from him, laughing and eating ice-cream and said.

‘Huh? And to think I only got interested in you once I saw that you had abs

And Barry stopped and looked over with such hurt that Iris laughed even harder and said, ‘I’m kidding dummy, I’ve loved you forever too’.


End file.
